Falkenau, the Impossible: Samuel Fuller Bears Witness

The very first film ever shot by the great American director Samuel Fuller was an amateur effort: as a U.S. army officer he filmed the liberation of a Nazi death camp in Czechoslovakia. French filmmaker Emil Weiss had the excellent idea of reviving this footage, getting Fuller to comment on it, and showing us various relevant locations in Europe today. Fuller's commanding presence--as a speaker, thinker, and moral conscience--makes this an unforgettable and indelible experience. On the same program with this new short feature is a 1944 Nazi film I haven't seen but that sounds like the most horrifying film ever made: Kurt Gerron's The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews. A fake documentary produced by the Third Reich as propaganda, the film fabricates an image of Jews living and working happily in a model city. In fact, the film was made by Jews--virtually or literally at gunpoint--and, after it was finished, the director and cast were exterminated in Auschwitz. Fuller's statement in Falkenau stresses the necessity of remembering the truth of the death camps today, and of denouncing the lies and fabrications of earlier and more recent Nazi apologists, the most chilling evidence of which would seem to be offered in this propaganda feature. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, December 3, 6:00 and 7:30, and Sunday, December 4, 4:00 and 7:30, 443-3737)